Or so we thought. During the first period, RMNB reader @Maggles330 tipped us off that they were at Dick’s Sporting Goods. I left during intermission and found a whole rack of them at the Frederick store. Many of you had success this morning at your local Dick’s Sporting Goods around the area.

Today there’s been a lot of movement from other official Winter Classic retailers. Let’s run down the list of where you can get them now.

A lot of people hate RMNB right now, and I don’t blame you one bit. I’m stupid, we’re all unprofessional, and our opinions are nerdy and statistical. So how about we stop talking about free agency for a minute and concentrate on something that’s actually important: getting Olie Kolzig 10,000 followers on Twitter.

Twitter fans, I am trying to get to 10,000 twitter followers by the end of July… Let's see if you we can get there. @washcaps@NHL

It’s going to be a long, wet, hot, hockeyless summer. The way we see it, you have two choices:

Spend the next five months (FIVE MONTHS, REALLY?!) in some dark corner balled up in the fetal positioning mumbling about perimeter shots.

Do fun/stupid stuff to take your mind off how sad and lonely you are without hockey.

The latter seems preferable from a mental health perspective, and we’re here to help! In partnership with the fine folks at RMNB, we’re proud to present the First Annual Brouwer Pouwer Generic-Photograph-Manipulation-Software Skills Contest™.

To celebrate the occasion, we’d like to continue a tradition we started a few years ago wherein you, our faithful and slightly demented readers, make homemade birthday cards for the Russian machine himself.

Update: Congratulations to Alan Campbell who correctly guessed “No trades.” Thanks to everyone who participated. That was fun, minus the whole nobody getting traded to our team part.

Original Post: With the trade deadline rapidly approaching, we wanted to once again try to put a little fun into the most stressful day of the hockey year. Here’s the deal. You guess the time (without going over) on when the Caps make their first trade of the day on our Facebook Fan Page (i.e. 11:22 AM) and if you are the first person to get the time right or are the closest without going over, you win this signed Mike Knuble “Be A Player” Rookie Card, a game-used Mike Green jersey card, and a game-used Alex Semin jersey card (pictured to the right).

You have until either 10 AM EST to submit your picks, or when GMGM makes his first move, whichever comes first.

Fine print: You must like our Facebook Fan Page and follow us on Twitter (@RussianMachine) to win. There will be only one – I repeat – one winner. If you pick the same time as someone else, the person who guessed the time earlier will win. You may pick “none” (as in “no trades”), but you must be the first person to guess it to win. Also, keep in mind that the trade deadline is Monday at 3pm, and many trades will be reported after that time as they come in. Finally, we will use the first media member to tweet the deal as the official trade announcement time.

We issued a challenge, oh faithful users of the Russian Machine, to create Caps-themed Christmas cards. The only rule: use an inferior graphics program or blingee.com to make it.

What we avoided telling you — just like my parents who took 14 years to come clean to me about the whole Santa thing (he IS real) — was that we didn’t have to follow the same rules. Above, is our holiday card by RMNB’s house illustrator, Rachel Cohen.

Meanwhile, you guys rocked this assignment harder than a Dmitry Orlov hip check. Though, to be honest, some of these submissions might land you on Santa’s naughty list once I post this. I apologize beforehand. Cruise on past the jump to check out the gallery and see what I mean.

During any holiday, we must solicit artwork from our readers because a) you guys do more creative stuff than we can, and b) we are desperate for non-Kuznetsov content.

So with eight-pound, six-ounce baby Jesus’s birthday only six days away, we need your Capitals-themed Christmas cards and quick! We prefer that you create your cards using a primitive graphics program like MS Paint, Adobe Photoshop 3.0, or gluing macaroni on construction paper. We want cards for all religions. After all, Jeff Halpern and the Puck Buddys are Jewish, and Jason Chimera (11 G, 6 A) obviously has a deal with the devil.

Mail your submission to thecrew@russianmachineneverbreaks.com by 5pm on Friday. We’d prefer if they’re jpegs. And for those of you who are too scared to submit, take solace in the fact that we’ll pretty much post anything. Weird youtubes of your kids dancing, pictures of an Ovechtree. Ornaments. Seriously, anything. Well, as long as it’s not super crude.

Get crackin’. We can’t wait to see what you guys come up with this year!

Esteemed pest control company, American Pest, protects your home from all kind of varmint. Let’s — hypothetically— say you cooked up two trays of red Jello shots for the playoffs and then accidentally left them out on your counter with a nearby window open, and then ants roughly equal in number to the cast of Ben-Hur began an occupation of your kitchen. American Pest can help.

American Pest is also a Washington Capitals sponsor, and they’re running a contest whereby you can win tickets to the Capitals-Penguins game on December 1st. The contest, in all its byzantine logic, is described below: